7 Top Flight Attendant Interview Tips I’d Like To Share

There are number of flight attendant interview tips I’d like to share with you here because I know that the hardest part about the job is actually getting it so anything that you can learn to help you will be beneficial.

We’ve seen the flight attendant interview process and you now know what the process is.

We’ve also seen from the flight attendant job description what an airline is looking for when they recruit flight attendants. While an active safety focus is right up there for most airlines, you as their flight attendant are the face of their airline and will need to show a propensity, capability and personal qualities that will embrace and propel their corporate image.

While everybody brings different qualities and as importantly personalities to the table, the airline interviewers will be not be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Established airlines spend a lot of money and time building their culture through the staff they employ and will want all employees to fit and marry with their brand.

So as a little extra, I guess the first of your flight attendant interview tips is to know about the airline you are applying to. Be aware of its corporate goals and identify its brand in the market place and the culture of its people before you front for an interview.

To put these flight attendant interview tips into context you might liken the difference here to perhaps a comparison between Easyjet and Singapore Airlines.

Do you think I would present the same flight attendant interview tips to you for these two airlines if you were fortunate enough to secure an interview with both of them? Add into this mix Delta Airlines of Skywest.

I hope your answer was no because you now understand what I have just said. Flight attendant interview tips have tailor made aspects, according to the company your applying for.

While flight attendants are individuals, many can easily be spotted in a crowd by others in the airline system without their uniform because they possess a certain something, a quality and it combines a number of characteristics and values like poise, grooming, pleasant disposition, an appearance of friendliness, an ability to communicate easily, and other great people skills.

These are all things that you want to be able to display at your interview because those that are chosen for the job will certainly have these qualities and more.

With these flight attendant interview tips, I do go through the top fourteen considered most important qualities of a flight attendant and fully explain the matrix upon which they are measure in Video Manual 1 of the AIRLINES Be a Flight Attendant today program.

However, much of this is who you are and the experiences you have in life so many of them they can be learned.

One of the best flight attendant interview tips here is to know what you good at and to honestly identify where you need to learn a new skill and do something about it. You might need to learn new or better communication skills or have more confidence in front of people, or you might have grown up in the country like me and have poor taste in grooming, again like me.

In my defense I think I always tried with what I had but looking back on my first interview photos I have to admit my grooming was ordinary to say the least.

I think I was pretty lucky to get my first flight attendant job to be totally honest!

If I was to be a little less harsh on myself I could say that my grooming was not what it should have been so I really had to blitz ´em with my other qualities!

Another of the flight attendant interview tips I’d like to share with you is this...

Be who you are. In other words be genuine. The airlines want to see you, not someone you’re not. Obviously you may be a tad nervous on interview day because this is a job that you’ve wanted since forever and that’s normal. But rest assured a good interviewer will ‘see through you’ if your faking it.

Remember these flight attendant interview tips, flight attendant interviewers get pretty good at what they do and they can afford to be very discriminatory because they interview lots of applicants and have so many to choose from.

Rest assured though that your selection process from an interviewer prospective must adhere to a matrix to enable consistent professionalism and fairness in the process and yet allow for the unique differences that separates you from other applicants in a non-discriminative way.

However personalities can sometimes clash and having been on an interview panel sometimes you just know that the guillotine will be very sharp for some people. I might add that it can also operate the other way. Sometimes you can see an applicant walk into the room and just know that they will be in the final pick. They have that something, that x factor of which we have already discussed above in these flight attendant interview tips.

Now as far as flight attendant interview tips go this should not even be included!

Alas I will state it here however because what I think is common sense apparently is not to everybody so let me spell this out very clearly. There is no excuse for poor presentation at any flight attendant interview. Period! Suffice to say here that impeccably professional should cover it.

Your grooming must be impeccable and your presentation must professional.

It might be the trend to wear your suit pants half way down your bum at your sister’s wedding but it’s not impeccable grooming at a flight attendant interview.

And it might be cool to wear you sunnies on your head at the races but at an interview it’s not professional.

If you can’t spot the difference here or want to know more I state very clearly what presentation is and the grooming standards required for an interview in Video Manual 1 of the AIRLINES Be a Flight Attendant today program for both men and women.

My next point in these flight attendant interview tips is you need to know how to answer interview questions and some of them need rehearsal

Make it easy for your interviewer. When they ask you a question, you answer it. Seems simple yeh? Well from my experience apparently not.

While some monosyllabic or di-syllabic answers are acceptable in a flight attendant interview, they are not the norm for most questions. Appropriate answers to yes no questions might be: - ‘Where are you from?’ Ceduna SA. Or; ‘What year did you leave school?’ 1994.

However, most of the questions you will answer in an interview require more detail. And I’m talking about those questions that start with the phrase, Tell me about... or Describe ... or “Can you recall a time when...” questions that will require a full succinct answer.

Now I will present you in these flight attendant interview tips with two formulas that you can follow to make this easy for you. One is the SAO (Situation, Action, Outcome) formula and the other is the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) formula. Both formulas will provide the same result when interpreted as they should be and I favour the SAO formula because it’s easy to use and remember and satisfies the result.

Behavioral type questions are favored and are used by the majority of airlines and for that matter just about every HR department that I know of because they are based on the premise that past behavior predicts future behavior.

I might add that I have strong issues with this because it suggests people can’t change, however, let’s build a bridge on this for now and accept that you will be faced with predominately behavioral type questions.

This being the case you’ll want to practice the formula for answering these type of questions. Notice I didn’t say in my flight attendant interview tips: remember and commit to memory answers to a long list of Interview questions like so many other flight attendant sites suggest you do. Can you imagine, what if you get asked a question that you have not memorized? Plus do you think you would appear calm, relaxed, and genuine when reciting an interview question. I think not!

So what do you do?

Here’s my flight attendant interview tips on this one

Certainly prepare and have a bank of personal experiences to draw from and develop a few anecdotes about different work events in your life. Then, when asked a behavior work or personal related question you’ll have one or two in mind. Then simply answer following the SAO formula and you’ll cover the answer to their behavioral type question satisfactorily.

With a bit of preparation you’ll avoid some of the most common errors like fishing for your answer, taking too long to get to the point or not having a point to get to, filling your answer with irrelevant detail or not concluding your answer.

An ounce of preparation will pay great dividends so imagine some behavioral type questions that are centered around the Flight attendant description that relates to you personally and try answering the question following the SAO formula.

It will build on your own confidence, avoid the pre-interview nerves and will free up your head-space to be ‘you’ in the interview. You will remove yourself from having to worry about superfluous ‘stuff’ and be able to look the interviewer in the eye and give a natural and complete answer as if they were a family friend.

Such questions might be:

Tell me a time when you had a run-in with a co-worker and what did you do about it?

Or...

At some stage in your past you would have had a difficult customer or situation. What happened and how do you deal with it.

Or...

Tell me about a time that you have done something in your workplace to improve a situation that was extra to your responsibilities.

OR...

We all have areas in our work life that we want to improve on. What have you identified and what have you done about it?

Once you've practiced writing answers for a few of these, the SAO or STAR formula will start to be second nature to you. And that’s so much better than rehearsing answers because there will always be a question you haven’t covered.

Rest easy because SAO will save your day.

Here is one such example of a question being asked with an appropriate SAO answer.

QUESTION

Many jobs have interruptions and changes to daily operations. Can you tell us of a time when this has happened to you recently and how did you feel? How did you deal with this situation and what was the outcome?

SITUATION

Disruption

ACTION

Action

OUTCOME

Result

Forecast rough weather for a flight particularly around about the time of hot beverage service.

Advised passengers that the cabin service would be adjusted slightly in that hot drinks would not be served due to possible risk of spillage that the rough weather may cause saving anybody from and hot coffee burns. However cool drinks would still be served.

Appreciative passengers because they felt they were appropriately informed and more than happy with the cold beverage service as judged by the many comments made to me on disembarkation.

Selection Rating =>

More flight attendant interview tips

You’ll find more on SAO and how to answer any interview question perfectly in the AIRLINES Be a Flight Attendant today program - particularly Video Manual 3.

You’ll also find many other flight attendant interview tips and hints but here’s my seventh tip for you.

Always remember that you will be observed at all times! From the moment you walk into the hotel, interview room or where ever the interviews are being held even when you are not being interviewed. Yes, eyes are watching and funnily enough you may never know who is or was watching you.

More information on Flight Attendant jobs and career availability with every other airline on this web site (plus others) can be viewed via our facebook pagefrom post to post as news becomes available.